Gary Powers had been in flight for four hours when his troubles began. His spy mission from an American airbase in Pakistan took him over central Russia, where, at more than 70,000 feet above the ground, he believed he was beyond the range of either fighter planes or missiles.
The 30-year-old CIA pilot, a veteran of the Korean war, expected to make his way, without incident, all the way across the Soviet Union to another base in Norway.
But when he was over the Russian city of Sverdlovsk, the unimaginable happened. His U-2 spy plane was hit by a Soviet missile barrage.
"I looked up, looked out, and just everything was orange, everywhere," Powers recalled.
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